The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 10-7 on Friday, October 23, that immigrants who entered the country without inspection and are held under the federal mandatory-detention law have no constitutional right to a bond hearing while their deportation cases proceed, even after decades living in the United States. Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote for the majority that the Constitution leaves those procedures to Congress. Seven judges dissented in four opinions, warning that the ruling lets the government hold long-term residents for as long as their cases take without ever having to justify it. The decision binds federal courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and it arrives as the Supreme Court prepares to decide whether the detention law applies to these immigrants in the first place.
The three cases
The ruling, in Sosnava Rodriguez v. Vergara, reverses three Texas district court orders. Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, a Mexican national, had lived in the United States without being admitted for more than 22 years when Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him after a traffic stop in December 2025. Alejandro Villegas Angel, also from Mexico, has lived here since 2011 and has two U.S.-citizen children; Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado, from Honduras, has lived here since 2012 and has one. Federal judges in Texas found that holding them without a hearing on whether they were dangerous or likely to flee violated due process, and ordered them released. A divided panel agreed in July, requiring such hearings within 90 days; the full court vacated that ruling on its own motion and reheard the case on September 24. The opinion does not say whether the three men, released after the district court rulings, have been detained again.
What the majority held
"Because Petitioners have never been admitted to the United States, due process does not entitle them to additional proceedings beyond what Congress has provided before they may be detained pending removal," Wilson wrote, relying on the Supreme Court's 2020 decision in DHS v. Thuraissigiam. The majority added that even if such a challenge were allowed, dangerousness and flight risk are irrelevant under the statute, which requires detention without regard to either, and that detention with "a definite termination point" raises no constitutional problem. It noted that detainees can end their confinement by leaving: "In no other context implicating a core liberty interest does the detainee hold the keys to his confinement." The main dissent answered that leaving would mean conceding removability, abandoning pending applications for relief and possibly being barred from returning for ten years. The majority concluded that "the Constitution entrusts broad authority to delineate immigration policy, and to design proceedings to effectuate those policy choices, to Congress—not courts." Judge James Ho, concurring, wrote: "Petitioners aren't claiming a right to liberty. They're claiming a right to unlawful entry." Judge Priscilla Richman concurred only in the judgment.
The dissents
Judge Leslie Southwick, writing for six judges, said the court had "constructed an impenetrable wall between the Constitution and these long-term residents, a wall not designed, recognized, or even suggested by the Supreme Court." He concluded: "The Constitution does not permit the Government to hold an alien for as long as that decision takes, with no obligation ever to justify continuing confinement." Judge Catharina Haynes agreed with Southwick's basic points but would limit that analysis to people like these petitioners, who have lived here more than ten years, have no criminal history and have close American relatives. Judge Dana Douglas wrote that the majority "detonates the core of the Due Process Clause based on a case about whether sex offenders may be required to publicly register their names," a reference to its reliance on a 2003 sex-offender registry decision.
The statute, and the Supreme Court
The constitutional question arose because of an earlier statutory one. In July 2025 the Department of Homeland Security began treating everyone who entered without inspection as an "applicant for admission" subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A), rather than under the neighboring section that allows bond. Earlier this year a Fifth Circuit panel accepted that reading in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, and the Eighth Circuit followed; nine other federal appeals courts have rejected it. Judge Stephen Higginson, dissenting, wrote that district judges had ruled against the government's reading "in a reported 9,300 rulings by more than 400 federal judges," and that for decades Congress, the executive branch and the courts "spoke with a singular voice to guarantee that all persons in the United States are protected by the Constitution when our government seizes and confines them." On October 1 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the question in Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha; no argument date has been set. If the justices hold that the bond-eligible section applies, Southwick wrote, "the constitutional issue we address here will have far less significance."
Michael Morley, a law professor at Florida State University, told Fox News the ruling "may impact the Supreme Court's reasoning," because courts weigh whether a reading of a statute would be unconstitutional. Rebecca Cassler of the American Immigration Council, who argued for the three men, called the ruling "an affront to the U.S. Constitution," saying that "if the government wants to detain someone, it has to explain why depriving them of their liberty is necessary." James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, called the decision a "Big win in the Fifth Circuit on mandatory detention for illegal aliens, a principle codified in 1996 legislation but ignored by the deep state for decades," in a social media post quoted by Politico. The court ordered its mandate issued immediately, so the decision takes effect without the usual waiting period.
This article reflects reporting through the afternoon of Monday, October 26, 2026. Sources: the Fifth Circuit's en banc opinion, October 23; the Supreme Court's docket in Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha; Tad Bartlett's Fifth Circuit digest; the American Immigration Council's case page and statement; Fox News; Politico, October 23.
